每日大赛

Pellissippi steps up efforts to make courses more accessible

A recent initiative at 每日大赛 created a collaborative environment in which faculty members worked together to increase the accessibility of their course materials.

The grant-funded program, Access by Design, is part of a larger institutional effort to be fully accessible by 2026, in accordance with updates to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

"It’s the responsibility of everyone to make sure they’re making things as accessible as possible,” said Charity Davenport, instructional technology specialist in the Pellissippi Academic Center for Excellence, who led Access by Design.

With its first cohort in spring 2025, 10 faculty members – five accessibility experts and five novices – met weekly throughout the semester to make to teach and learn how to make their courses accessible. At the initiative’s closing ceremony, faculty members shared their progress with some increasing the accessibility of their course up to 45%.

“I think that was the most exciting for them,” Davenport said. “That they could actually see the progress that made their course more accessible, and it was a tangible number.”

A common misconception is that faculty needn't make their courses accessible until they have a student who requires an accommodation, Davenport said. However, many students may require those accommodations but don’t have the resources, time or finances to acquire a formal diagnosis for them.

Making courses accessible can be a benefit to all students, not just those with a disability. For example, a student who is also a parent may benefit from captioned videos that can play without sound and not disturb sleeping children.

It’s beneficial to think about course accessibility like curb cutouts, said Kate O'Meara, ESL program coordinator and associate professor of English at Pellissippi, who was a mentor in Access by Design’s first cohort. Curb cutouts may seem like they’re primarily built to make sidewalks accessible for wheelchair users, but they ultimately end up helping people pushing baby strollers or riding bicycles.

Something that is designed to positively impact a small percentage of the population is likely to have a greater impact on almost everyone in that environment,” O'Meara said, and “that is the goal … it's not to benefit one individual in one specific instance. It's to benefit all individuals in all instances. And that's pretty exciting — that we can make the world an easier place to navigate for everyone.”

Jerry Burns, who teaches General Chemistry at 每日大赛, participated in the Access by Design program as a mentee, and increased the accessibility of his course materials from 30% to 74%.

Several of his students made positive comments about the resources he added as a result of the program, said Burns, who believes the progress he made in Access by Design would have seemed impossible without the initiative.

“It worked out quite well,” he said. “We’ve made quite a lot of improvement.”

O’Meara said and her faculty partner helped each other understand how course materials could be more accessible and offered each other solutions. It’s a collaboration and conversation opportunity that she believes will have long-term benefits.

“When our students can use our material in the easiest way for them, it makes the classes better for them,” O’Meara said. “It makes education better for them, and it also makes our lives easier.”